Cao Dai Temple & Cu Chi Tunnels 1 day

Our tour guide and driver will pick you up from your
hotel Ho Chi Minh City and depart for Tay Ninh. Upon arrival, we will join Cao
Dai followers to arrange their daily afternoon mass for half an hour and get to
know something about Caodaism. Have lunch at a local restaurant before visiting
Cu Chi tunnels. Another name of Cu Chi is “ Steel land”. It’s where the army
troops of the VC(Viet Cong) concealed themselves during the Vietnam war. The
tunnel systems were created by local people over a period of years.

This huge construction was a
habitation for villagers in the war time. With 3 levels of depth, it was never
discovered by the US during
the war despite its proximity to Saigon. Visit
the fighting tunnel system with your local guide.

If you are that way inclined, you can
purchase ammunition and fire a weapon of the war on the rifle range.

Drive back to Ho Chi Minh City. Tour ends at your hotel.

Tour Includes:
- English or French speaking guide, other language speaking tour guides are available
on request
- Entrance fees during guided time
- Transfers & transport with air-condition
- Lunch & Water during the trip

Cu Chi district is well-known
nationwide as the base where the Vietnamese mounted their operations of the Tet
Offensive in 1968.The tunnels are between 0.4 to 1m wide, just enough for a
person to walk along by bending or dragging. However, parts of the tunnels have
been modified to accommodate visitors.

The upper soil layer is between 3 to
5m thick and can support the weight of a 60-ton tank and the damage of light
cannons and bombs. The underground network provided meeting rooms, sleeping
quarters, commanding rooms, hospitals, and other social rooms. By visiting the
Cu Chi tunnels provides a better understanding of the prolonged resistance war
of the Vietnamese people and also of the persistent and clever character of the
Vietnamese nation.

A place that’s physically invisible,
the Cu Chi tunnels have sure carved themselves a celebrated niche in the
history of guerilla warfare. Its celebrated and unseen geography straddles –
all of it underground – something which the Americans eventually found as much
to their embarrassment as to their detriment. They were dug, before the
American War, in the late 1940s, as a peasant-army response to a more mobile
and ruthless French occupation. The plan was simple: take the resistance
briefly to the enemy and then, literally, vanish.

Firstly, the French then the Americans
were baffled as to where they melted to, presuming, that it was somewhere under
cover of the night in the Mekong delta. But
the answer lay in the sprawling city under their feet – miles and miles of
tunnels. In the gap between French occupation and the arrival of the Americans
the tunnels fell largely into disrepair, but the area’s thick natural earth
kept them intact and maintained by nature. In turn it became not just a place
of hasty retreat or of refuge, but, in the words of one military historian,
"an underground land of steel, home to the depth of hatred and the
incommutability of the people. "It became, against the Americans and under
their noses, a resistance base and the headquarters of the southern Vietnam
Liberation Forces. The linked threat from the Viet Cong - the armed forces of
the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam - against the southern city
forced the unwitting Americans to select Cu Chi as the best site for a massive
supply base – smack on top of the then 25-year old tunnel network. Even
sporadic and American’s grudgingly had to later admit, daring attacks on the
new base, failed for months to indicate where the attackers were coming from –
and, importantly, where they were retreating to. It was only when captives and
defectors talked that it became slightly more clear. But still the entries,
exits, and even the sheer scale of the tunnels weren’t even guessed at.
Chemicals, smoke-outs, razing by fire, and bulldozing of whole areas, pinpointed
only a few of the well-hidden tunnels and their entrances. The emergence of the
Tunnel Rats, a detachment of southern Vietnamese working with Americans small
enough to fit in the tunnels, could only guess at the sheer scale of Cu Chi. By
the time peace had come, little of the complex, and its infrastructure of
schools, dormitories, hospitals, and miles of tunnels, had been uncovered. Now,
in peace, only some of it is uncovered – as a much-visited part of the southern
tourist trail. Many of the tunnels are expanded replicas, to avoid any
claustrophobia they would induce in tourists. The wells that provided the vital
drinking water are still active, producing clear and clean water to the
three-tiered system of tunnels that sustained life. A detailed map is almost
impossible, for security reasons if nothing else: an innate sense of direction
guided the tunnelers and those who lived in them.

Many routes linked to local rivers,
including the Saigon
River, their top soil
firm enough to take construction and the movement of heavy machinery by
American tanks, the middle tier from mortar attacks, and the lower, 8-10m down
was impregnable. A series of hidden, and sometimes booby-trapped, doors
connected the routes, down through a system of narrow, often unlit and invented
tunnels. At one point American troops brought in a well-trained squad of 3000
sniffer dogs, but the German Shepherds were too bulky to navigate the courses.
One legend has it that the dogs were deterred by Vietnamese using American soap
to throw them off their scent, but more usually pepper and chilly spray was
laid at entrances, often hidden in mounds disguised as molehills, to throw them
off. But the Americans were never passive about the tunnels, despite being
unaware of their sheer complexity. Large-scale raiding operations used tanks,
artillery and air raids, water was pumped through known tunnels, and engineers
laid toxic gas. But one American commander’s report at the time said:
"It’s impossible to destroy the tunnels because they are too deep and
extremely tortuous."

Today the halls that showed
propagandas films, housed educational meetings and schooled Vietnamese in
warfare are largely intact. So too are the kitchens where visitors can dine on
steamed manioc, pressed rice with sesame and salt, a popular meal during the
war, as they are assailed with true stories of how life went on as near-normal,
much of the time. Ancestors were worshipped there, teaching was
well-timetabled, poultry was raised – and even couples trusted, fell in love,
were wed, and honeymooned there. But visitors have it easier: those
re-constructed tunnels give the flavour of the tunnels but not the claustrophobia
and the sacrifice of the estimated 18,000 who served their silent and unseen
war there with only around one-third surviving, the rest casualties of American
assaults, snakes, rats and insects.

Now the unseen and undeclared No Man’s
Land is undergoing a revival, saluted as a Relic of National History and
Culture with its Halls of Tradition displaying pictures and exhibits. The
nearby Ben Duoc-Cu Chi War Memorial, where the reproduced tunnels have been
built, stands as an-above ground salute to a hidden war.

Cao Dai Great Temple
built between 1933 and 1955. The Great
Temple is 140m long and
40m wide. It has 4 towers each with a different name: Tam Dai, Hiep Thien Dai,
Cuu Trung Dai, and Bat Quai Dai. The interior of the temple consists of a
colonnaded hall and a sanctuary. The 2 rows of columns are decorated with
dragons and are coated in white, red, and blue paint. The domed ceiling is
divided into 9 parts similar to a night sky full of stars and symbolizing
heaven. Under the dome is a giant star-speckled blue globe on which is painted
the Divine Eye, the official symbol of Caodaism. Cao Dai followers worship
Jesus Christ, Confucius, Taoism, and Buddha.

Everyday, there are 4 times of
services, 6 a.m., noon, 6 p.m., and midnight, on our tour visiting Cu Chi
tunnels and Tay Ninh province, we can witness the solemn ceremony of the unique
religion - Caodaism at Caodai Holly See at its noon tide prayer service with
followers dressed in red, blue, yellow and white robes.

Vacation Deals Vietnam is one of the first
and leading online Tour Operators in Vietnam who specializes in Vietnam
and Indochina Travel Packages, cruises in Vietnam and Mekong Delta, hotel and
resort reservations, car rental, ticket bookings... etc..., Serving many
different consumer segments from Individuals to groups' bookings with
prompt reply and reasonable costs. We are always willing to help all
travelers to Vietnam.
You can get our valuable guides about accommodations, visa granting, transportation
in Vietnam,
etc just by sending a email for us – booktouronline@gmail.com. We will
mail back around 12 hours

Vacation Deals Vietnam is one of the first and leading online Tour Operators in Vietnam who specializes in Vietnam and Indochina Travel Packages, cruises in Vietnam and Mekong Delta, hotel and resort reservations, car rental, ticket bookings... etc..., Serving many different consumer segments from Individuals to groups' bookings with prompt reply and reasonable costs. We are always willing to help all travelers to Vietnam. You can get our valuable guides about accommodations, visa granting, transportation in Vietnam, etc just by sending a email for us – booktouronline@gmail.com. We will mail back around 12 hours.